Sweet or Sour
by Kefalion
Summary: Pansy's been given mentorship over a new student, a miss Luna Lovegood who's not started Hogwarts until she was fourteen because she spent 10 years in the realm of fairies. Pansy's patience will be put to the test.


This story was written for the **Quarter Final **of the Seventh Season of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I'm writing as **Chaser 2 **for **The Tutshill Tornados**.

The Name of the Round: In it together

CHASER 2: Write a story using your Chaser 3's main characters from their first QL fic this season (You do not need to use the same pairings).

The main characters in _Of Moons and Flowers_ by Hazuzu were Luna Lovegood and Pansy Parkinson

These are the prompts I'm using as a chaser to score some extra points:

1\. [word] Mundane  
12\. [location] Honeydukes  
14\. [colour] Silver

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any part of the world J.K. Rowling has created. It's all hers, from Diagon Alley to Hogwarts to all the people living there.

Thanks to my wonderful, final worthy team for betaing!

WARNING/info: Changeling!Au

* * *

**Sweet or Sour  
**_Words: 1 149_

* * *

Pansy regretted having opened her mouth to complain. It had been especially stupid to do so in public and not when she was alone with her closest confidants. It was just that Hogwarts had been so incredibly dull of late, and she simply couldn't keep quiet about how deeply she detested everything boring, insignificant, and mundane. So she had complained, loudly, and there had been consequences.

One of the other prefects, one of the senior Ravenclaw ones, had overheard her, and he had latched onto it as a way to fix his own problem, claiming that it would alleviate Pansy of her boredom and that they would both win on the arrangement. Tempted, Pansy had shown interest, which had been her second mistake, and the Ravenclaw prefect had immediately washed his hands of his task and had saddled her with the mentorship of a newly enrolled student.

The new student, Luna Lovegood, was not only the daughter of the utter whacko who published _The Quibbler_ and general pain in Pansy's neck, but she was also a returned changeling, which explained why a fourteen-year-old was new to Hogwarts.

If the rumours had as much as an ounce of truth to them, Luna, or Loony, as Pansy called her in her mind, had been trapped in the realm of fairies for ten years before she was unceremoniously dumped in one of the bins behind some dingy Muggle pub in Worcester. She'd apparently given a delivery man a real scare as she climbed out of the bin, shook herself like a wet dog and shrugged off a layer of silvery fairy dust before asking him if he was a particularly tall and clean hobgoblin.

"Stop that!" Pansy said and pulled at Loony's sleeve. It took three tugs for Loony to turn her eyes away from some gleaming wind chimes. There was no wind. The chimes were still, not playing. There was no reason for Loony to be so interested in them. Nor had there been any reason for her to stare into one of the puddles on the cobbled street, leaning down so far that her hair got wet. Nor had there had been any reason for her to give every person she met the most nonsensical and insulting compliments—_I love your ears! They're so big and floppy_ and _You have the most wonderful knuckles! How do you get them to be so wrinkly?_—But she did all of it anyway. Loony could use some more mundanity.

"Come on. We're going in here. Stay close. Don't touch anything. If you want something, tell me, and I'll tell you what it is, and if you still want it, I'll help you buy it. Got it?"

"Yes, Pansy." Loony bobbed her head. Some speckles of silver came loose. The fairy dust was like dandruff on her. Though it had been months since she got back to the normal world, it kept falling.

Pansy curled her top lip and brushed some silver from her sleeve. "Maybe don't stay too close."

She pushed open the door to Honeydukes, rolling her eyes as Loony fixated on the ringing doorbell announcing them, and she pushed her way inside, tripping some third-year on her first Hogsmeade visit—a Mudblood if Pansy wasn't mistaken—and continued further into the store without apologizing. Hogsmeade visits were important to her too, so excuse her if she was a little brusque.

She found a small corner by the shelf of special effect sweets that no other students were crowding, and she could breathe out. She pretended to be very interested in the new flavour of pepper imps—_Now infused not only with chilli pepper, but ALL kinds of pepper!_—and much too soon, Loony joined her.

"That wasn't very kind. That was behaviour more worthy of a swamp hedgeling than of a witch."

"And what exactly do you think you know about how witches should behave?"

Loony frowned in her vague way where only a small crease appeared between her too pale eyebrows—Pansy really ought to introduce Loony to make up. It would be a service to everyone. "Only what you've told me. And what you told me fits better with an alvar than a swamp hedgeling. You've said that witches are polite, graceful, well-dressed, soft-spoken, and intelligent with impeccable hair."

Pansy mirrored Loony's frown—though hers was probably a lot more pronounced and had better eyebrows. "I won't pretend to know what those things are, but yes. A witch is all of those things. The thing is, however, that a witch only extends her best nature to people who are deserving, such as fellow witches and wizards. Mudbloods don't deserve any positive attention. They're not true witches or wizards. They're mundane and don't belong in the magical world."

"But they have magic and wands and are allowed to go to Hogwarts, and even if they weren't, why shouldn't we be alvar all the time to everyone? Why should we be swamp hedgelings sometimes?"

"Stop saying those words!"

"What words?"

"Alv-something and hedge-nonsense!"

"Why?"

"Because it makes no sense."

"Being mean to other students doesn't make sense either. And I think you have your facts wrong. That girl you tripped, she doesn't have any mud in her blood. I think I would recognize a muck boogie if I saw one."

Pansy groaned and hid her face in her hands.

"Oh. Was that more of the words I wasn't supposed to say?"

"Yes," Pansy said through her fingers.

"Shall we forget about this for now and you can help me pick something to buy?"

"If you can be normal for as long as it takes, then yes."

Loony smiled. "I'm always normal. Me-normal. Not mundane-normal if that's what you're talking about. Will that do?"

"I suppose it will have to." Pansy squared her shoulders, resolving that if Loony couldn't be normal, she'd have to be doubly so herself. And well, _Luna _wasn't a Mudblood, so she deserved to see Pansy from her best side, even if she was completely crazy in other unforgivable ways. She plastered on a winning smile—she'd learned how to do it in an article by Gilderoy Lockhart—and asked, "Do you like sweet or sour candy better?"

"I think I'd try some of those." Luna pointed at a display at the other end of the special effects sweets. It was a large jar filled with glittering silver crystals and a sign that said: _Fairy sparkles—Bursts on your tongue in a flavour of menthol and citrus and covers you in lifelike fairy dust_.

Pansy glanced from the display to Luna and back. "You've already had some of those haven't you?"

"Maybe." Luna shook her hair, silver-coloured fairy dust falling from it. "I'll let you taste some. My treat."

Pansy tried to press it down, but she couldn't. It pressed at her cheeks, strained at her lips, and she let it free. She grinned. "I'd like that."

* * *

**The End**

* * *

**A/N 6th October 2019:**

This was not my usual stride. Or my usual characters. Pushed in some AU to make it more my style. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
